Camerons Brewery came away as winners of the PubAid Award at the All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group’s 25th Annual Beer Awards Dinner. The event, which was held in Westminster on Tuesday 9th July, was attended by members of parliament, brewers, pub companies, journalists and writers from the brewing and hospitality sector.
Camerons won the PubAid Corporate Charity Fundraiser of the Year award which specifically looks at the contribution that brewers and pub companies make to charities, including those in their local community. The brewer won this award on the back of a number of initiatives it has launched over the past year including their partnership with the RNLI, Toast Ales and local Alice House and Teesside Hospices. The brewer has also been one of the key sponsors of local boxer Savannah Marshall and has provided funding since the London 2012 Olympic Games. This has helped give Savannah the opportunity to jump from amateur to professional fighter. Across their pub group the brewer has also run the ‘World’s Biggest Pub Quiz’ which has raised money for the Prostate Cancer UK charity.
Previous winners of this award have been Greene King, JD Wetherspoon, Joseph Holt and the Stonegate Pub Company.
Des O’Flanagan, co-founder of PubAid, said: “Everyone on the PubAid Steering Group was hugely impressed by the positive impact Camerons is making in its local community, and by the diverse range of causes they support.
“It’s clear that a passion for doing good and helping local individuals and groups runs throughout the company, as their charity initiatives are integrated into the business. They are worthy winners of this award.”
Mike Wood MP, chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group and MP for Dudley South said “It was fantastic to learn about the various items Camerons had been doing across both the brewery and their growing pub estate. What was great to see was how they have helped support charities and individuals within their own geographical area but also how they have followed this up in their pubs which now feature outside of their North East heartland.”
“It is great to see the role a business like Camerons is playing in the North East and the importance it places on supporting the areas their brewery and pubs are based” Mike added.
Chris Soley, chief executive at Camerons Brewery said “We are obviously delighted to have won this award. For us it was great to have been nominated and recognised for the work we have been doing to support our local communities but to win it really is a great sense of achievement. We have seen the list of the previous winners, and we know how much work they do within their local areas, so to be recognised alongside them makes us extremely proud.”
“The work we have done recently with both the RNLI and Toast Ales has been really important to us as part of our corporate and social responsibility strategy. As a coastal brewer we have always been a great supporter of the RNLI and the work they do. Being able to donate money on beer sales to them was something we introduced earlier this year and we feel it really strengthens our bond with them on a local and national basis” Chris added.
“We have pubs in areas like Redcar, Scarborough and Whitby and in these towns the RNLI plays a key part within the local community. Working with Toast Ales on a collaboration beer last year also struck a note with us, as we continually look at ways of being more efficient and reducing our waste and carbon footprint within the brewery and pubs. Brewing a beer alongside Toast and using waste bread was an enormous eye opener to us and showed a way of reducing food waste as well as raising funds for the Feedback charity” Chris ended.
ENDS
Notes to Editors:
Camerons Brewery Ltd is one of the largest private breweries in the UK, with the capacity to produce more than 1 million hectolitres of beer annually.
Formed in 2002, following its purchase by businessman David Soley, the company’s origins date back to 1865 when John William Cameron was engaged to run the original brewery. Camerons is headquartered in Hartlepool at the historic Lion Brewery site, which was built in 1892, and its Visitor Centre is located nearby on the site of the former Stranton pub – one of the town’s oldest pubs.
As well as brewing its own high quality beers and lagers, including its flagship beer, Strongarm, a well-rounded 4.0% ABV ruby red ale and new Motörhead collaboration brew Röad Crew APA, Camerons is a contract brewer for UK based and major multinational companies.
In addition to its core brewing operation, Camerons possesses a growing retail pub estate of more than 70 venues – ranging from community pubs and city centre venues, to restaurant and accommodation-based outlets. This includes the popular The Head of Steam brand, which the firm acquired in 2014 and seven new venues purchased from Leeds Brewery in July 2016
PubAid is a working party created in 2009 to highlight the work done by UK pubs for charity, sharing the message that UK pubs raise over £100m per year. PubAid runs the World’s Biggest Pub Quiz, which takes place every March. In 2019, around 2,200 pubs took part.
The PubAid working party is led by co-founder Des O’Flanagan, and includes a number of well-known figures from the pub world, who lend their time and other resources to help spread the positive messages about pubs’ role at the heart of their communities.
The All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group was set up in 1993 and has a membership of over 350 MPs and Peers. The Beer Group’s objectives are to broaden recognition of the enormous contribution of brewing and pubs to the UK economy from grain to glass – and to celebrate the unique role that beer and pubs play in our society
Toast Ale brews craft beer that’s better for the planet. Their range of award-winning beers are sustainably brewed with fresh surplus bread from bakeries and the sandwich industry, replacing one third of the malted barley typically using in brewing. All profits are poured into environmental charities to end food waste, with £25,000 donated to date.
Toast launched in the UK in 2016, and expanded to the US (New York), South Africa (Cape Town), Iceland (Reykjavik) and Brazil (Rio) in 2017. The company open-sources a recipe for homebrewers and collaborates with brewers and bakers all over the world to support local food charities.
Toast Ale is a certified social enterprise and B Corp, using business as a force for good. They have brewed with over 1 million slices of bread, which when stacked up would reach 1.5 times the height of Everest. This impact has avoided 32tCO2e, 9 hectares of land and 130m3 of fresh water in the barley reduction and bread prevented from going to landfill
For more information, please visit www.toastale.com or contact press@toastale.com. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @toastale.
Chris Soley chief executive at Camerons Brewery (left) collecting the award from Mike Wood MP chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group